What we check, and what we do not

Every check on this page is free and stays free. We charge for convenience and for data, never for not being robbed.

What runs before a listing goes live

A photo ID is matched to a live selfieEveryone who lists or messages is verified with a photo ID and a live selfie. The result and the date it happened are kept. The document images are deleted once the check clears.

Dealers are removed rather than ranked lowerTwo cars up at a time and two new ones every 90 days per person. From the fifth car in 12 months a person looks before it goes live, and an account that is running a lot comes down. A dealer posting as a private seller is the single thing this marketplace exists to stop.

VIN reuse across accounts is flaggedThe same VIN appearing under different sellers is a pattern we look for, because it is what curbstoning looks like in data.

The federal NMVTIS title record and the NHTSA open-recall lookup are not run against listings. Whether a car here has a title brand, a theft record or an open recall is not known to us, and every listing page says so rather than leaving a blank row that could be read as a pass.

What KowskiCars will not do

Inspect the carNobody from KowskiCars has driven, lifted or looked at any vehicle on this site. There is no inspection service here and no condition grade.

Show you seller ratingsA rating only exists after a sale both sides confirm. At launch nobody has one, so there is no rating component in this product and no listing shows stars.

Keep your ID photosThe document images are deleted once the check clears. What is kept is the result, the date, the issuing state and the birth year, and none of that is shown to the other party.

What is known about how these sales go wrong

These are statements of fact about private car sales in Illinois, not instructions. What anyone does with them is their own business.

A forged payment instrument carries its own phone numberThe number printed on a counterfeit reaches an accomplice rather than the institution named on it. Only the institution that issued an instrument knows whether it is real and still outstanding, and its own published number is not the one on the paper.

"Funds available" is not the same thing as clearedA deposited instrument can be reversed weeks later, and the money comes back out of the account it went into. Availability of funds is a courtesy extended by the institution holding the account, not a settlement.

Overpayment is always a fraud patternA payment for more than the asking price followed by a request to send the difference back is the oldest form of this. There is no legitimate version of it.

A screenshot is not a paymentA wire confirmation, a transfer receipt and an app screenshot are all images. None of them is money, and every one of them can be produced in a minute by anyone.

A deposit to hold a car nobody has seen is not a depositIt is the most common opening move in a listing that does not correspond to a vehicle. KowskiCars has no mechanism to return one.

A history report can never clear a carA vehicle history check is a record of what was reported. It can show that a car has a problem. It can never prove that a car does not.

Numbers we will publish here

Once there have been 50 confirmed sales this page carries monthly figures: confirmed fraud reports per 1,000 sales, listings blocked before publishing, the no-show rate, and how long an appeal takes. There have been none yet, so there is nothing honest to publish and nothing is published. No figure appears on this site without the line underneath it saying where and when it came from.

What we check, and what we do not

What runs before a listing goes live

What KowskiCars will not do

What is known about how these sales go wrong

Numbers we will publish here

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